BURGE-LUBIN [the full significance of this for himself dawning on him] Then we three may be in the same boat with you, for all we know?
THE ARCHBISHOP. You may. Therefore I advise you to be very careful how you take any step that will make my position uncomfortable.
BURGE-LUBIN. Well, I'm dashed! One of my secretaries was remarking only this morning how well and young I am looking. Barnabas: I have an absolute conviction that I am one of the—the—shall I say one of the victims?—of this strange destiny.
THE ARCHBISHOP. Your great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather formed the same conviction when he was between sixty and seventy. I knew him.
BURGE-LUBIN [depressed] Ah! But he died.
THE ARCHBISHOP. No.
BURGE-LUBIN [hopefully] Do you mean to say he is still alive?
THE ARCHBISHOP. No. He was shot. Under the influence of his belief that he was going to live three hundred years he became a changed man. He began to tell people the truth; and they disliked it so much that they took advantage of certain clauses of an Act of Parliament he had himself passed during the Four Years War, and had purposely forgotten to repeal afterwards. They took him to the Tower of London and shot him.
The apparatus rings.
CONFUCIUS [answering] Yes? [He listens].